


Human Voices (Don't) Wake Us

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 05:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19144420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "(Sorry if this is a bit wrong, firs time posting on a kink meme)I had an idea where Pitch gets his nightmare sand into Jack (any way is up to the author) and it affects him greatly to the point where he falls into a deep sleep. For the first few days, while no one can wake him up, he doesn’t seem to be in pain or anything, so supposedly he’s just in a normal sleep. But then, the nightmare sand starts taking their effect and giving Jack the most terrible nightmares he’s ever had, making him scream and cry out and thrash, but unable to wake up.The Guardians try and find a way to wake him (with North going through old texts and scrolls…y'know, a little hint towards the book canon) and unfortunately they find out that if they don’t wake him and cure him in time, he’ll end up becoming a Nightmare/Fearling himself.+10 if you get really descriptive with the nightmares"Everything in the prompt doesn’t fit into one of my small fills, but presented here is a moment while Sandy keeps vigil over Jack, before Jack starts screaming.Sandy knows what Jack’s going though, sort of, because of the nightmaresand arrow, but Jack being human makes things more uncertain regarding his recovery.





	Human Voices (Don't) Wake Us

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 11/4/2015.

Sandy was the one to keep vigil. The others had believed him when he told them that the sleep Jack was now trapped in wasn’t normal, but they didn’t understand it the same way he did. He frowned with worry, turning Jack’s arm again to see the long, shallow cut crusted with grains of dark sand. He touched his fingers to it gently, and again—nothing.  
  
When he had touched nightmaresand before, it had always felt alive. It clung to him and tried to draw out his fears. It tried to remain nightmaresand even as his touch forced it to become dreamsand. The sand by Jack’s wound was dead. It was nothing but sand, and whatever animated it, whatever had made it the stuff of nightmares, was gone. He could not change it into dreamsand because there was nothing in it to change.  
  
But there had been something. The sand had been part of Pitch’s scythe, and they had been fighting in close quarters, too close for all of them, really, and the blade had caught Jack even as Pitch had been retreating. Such a minor skirmish, and now…now the nightmaresand was dead on Jack’s arm, and Sandy was almost sure that what had animated it had gone inside him through his wound.  
  
He wondered if they were lucky that Jack wasn’t like Sandy. His body wouldn’t dissolve, and he wouldn’t have to put himself back together. Jack might not have been able to figure out how to do that.  
  
But then again, Sandy had known in his every grain that the nightmares  _could_  be expelled, and it had been straightforward to do so when he had been formless and able to force them out all at once, in every direction.  
  
For Jack…Jack had never changed a nightmare into a dream. And there were so few ways in and out of his body, and making any more would be dangerous.  
  
Sandy leaned over and brushed Jack’s hair away from his forehead. He had been silent, so far, but dreamsand wouldn’t settle over him. His veins seemed darker, under skin paler than before.  
There was no joy in his face anymore, and Sandy was very, very worried.  
  
The nightmaresand was different from Pitch. He knew that all too well, after his own near-death thanks to the nightmaresand arrow. Pitch, when he made nightmares, was both selfish and creative. He liked making children afraid of impossible things, of fantastical monsters that lurked beneath beds and behind closet doors. He liked shaping strange creatures, coming up with elaborate and horrifying nightmare plots, putting elements into his terrors that the children wouldn’t have thought of on their own. He liked leaving his signature, always in the hope that someone would eventually see his hand writing it. And when he left, he left completely, not wanting to let his power linger where he had decided was not worthwhile for his main self to be.  
  
The nightmaresand, stolen as it was, wasn’t so refined or so easy to get rid of. The nightmaresand had no purpose but to seek out fears and stick to them, amplifying them. Sandy wasn’t sure what precisely the purpose of this was—maybe it made it easier for Pitch to feed off the fear? But that didn’t exactly matter right now. The problem was that nightmaresand forced the person it infected to relive the situations that had formed their worst fears, to experience again their most nightmarish memories. Sandy had had millennia-worth to choose from, and it had nearly killed him.  
  
Jack was only three hundred years old, but, well, three hundred years was long enough. Jack had told them how he had died before or as he had been chosen. Would those memories be the ones the nightmaresand latched onto? They would be fresh, especially since Jack had just regained them.  
  
Jack moved restlessly on the bed, his first movements in days. He opened his mouth wide, as if to scream, and Sandy leaned back, preparing for the sound.  
  
But Jack didn’t scream. He choked and gasped, and tossed and turned in distress, but he didn’t scream. It was as if he couldn’t. As if he was—well. As if he was drowning. Sandy frowned deeply, and reached out to take Jack’s hand. How long would the nightmaresand keep Jack in this memory? How long could he survive? And if it moved on to some other memory, how long would it be before Jack began to scream?  
  
Watching him now, it was impossible to say which might be worse. With shaking hands, Sandy shaped a message.  _There’s been a change. Hurry._  
  
As soon as it left the room, he took Jack’s hand again, and almost wished he was more human, so he might have a better idea of how to get Jack back again, have more to do than just hold his hand as he drowned, and drowned, and drowned. 


End file.
